


Or brushed a royal gown

by lotesse



Category: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Clothing, Genderbending, M/M, Post-Quest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-20
Updated: 2010-09-20
Packaged: 2017-10-12 01:16:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/119178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotesse/pseuds/lotesse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Frodo came up, the gown and stays and petticoats and jewels were already spread on her bed, sparkling and strange, and somehow cruel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Or brushed a royal gown

_And now, I'm different from before, As if I breathed superior air, Or brushed a royal gown; My feet, too, that had wandered so, My gypsy face transfigured now To tenderer renown.  
~Emily Dickinson_

 

Her dark hair was just getting long enough to curl again at the ends. It had been so tangled and snarled and filthy by the end that the healers had had to crop it quite short. Sam had managed to keep it well enough through the first long leg of their journey, and even once they'd parted from the rest of their company at Parth Galen he'd carefully taken time to clean it and to braid it back anew every few days. But first the clinging spider silk that had befouled the spiraling dark strands in Torech Ungol, and then the brutal treatment Frodo had received at the hands of the orcs in the tower there, who had used the rope of her hair as a handle to drag her by, and had left her scalp bleeding as a result, had made it near impossible to neaten again. Sam had tried, once they'd escaped the tower and were lying hid at the edge of that long dry terrible plain, to tease out the worst of the snarls. But they were matted densely, and he had no instrument to work with save fingers grown clumsy with hunger and weariness and long worry. He'd not been able to do much good.

Mayhap, he'd thought then as he'd mourned over the grime and the mats and the clotted scabs at the roots, if he'd had better training – the sort of training as proper ladies' maids got, the sort that Nora Chubb had been planning for the last he'd spoken to her – he'd have had more of an idea how to set Frodo to rights. But she'd never exactly been what anyone'd call a proper lady. Wild and strange she'd been, always, ever since he'd first set eyes on her. Less so as she'd grown from lass to lady, and sometimes the wildness got hid so deep that she'd be just another of the gentlefolk, prosy and pretty and earthen. She'd never been one for fancy dress, for all that she was highborn, and could rig with the best of them when she had cause. Every now and again she'd got herself up in fine silks and muslins, pretty as any flower but still somehow strong-seeming under the bright colors. Most days, though, it'd been simple bodies over plain skirts, never so full that she couldn't loop them up to ride, nor so fine as to prohibit walking along dusty ways.

She'd only ever had him about the place, after her uncle'd left. Gradually, piece by piece, he'd learned over the years to pin her up tidy, and the way that her laces ought to be threaded. He'd learned how to wash out her moonrags, and other maid's work of the same sort – not that there'd been much call for it of late. She'd not bled in the last months. Not enough of her left for it.

When it was just to two of them, alone and in the wild, none of it had seemed to matter. She'd worn lad's clothes, mostly, her breeches soft and her shirts left hanging long like pale tunics over her thighs. He'd slept beside her and carried her on his back, and held her close while her burden dragged her down, and never given a thought to society manners. How could something so stupid manner when she was dying? But now that they were back among civilized folks he felt retroactively shamed, as if he were guilty of some awful impropriety. Everything that had been clear at home – his place, and hers, in the wider world – had been thrown into disarray when he wasn't looking, and he didn't know how to go about tidying that particular mess.

For that first feast, when they were still at the Field of Cormallen, they'd given her a smooth, simple-made linen gown of dusky white, plain and comfortable, and yet she'd looked like a queen stepped out of legend in it, especially once Sam had looped the silver and white gemmed diadem around her brow. The healers hadn't wanted her garbed more elaborately than that, for they said that her body was still recovering from the hurt it had taken, and that no undue discomfort was to be caused to her, not even in the smallest of ways.

But they were in Minas Tirith now, a great city of men, and they were living there as the new King's particular guests of honor. Which was well enough, when they were in the fair white house that had been set aside for the Fellowship's use; it was a great comfort having other hobbits about, for one thing, and Frodo was happy to have Gandalf's and Legolas' and Gimli's companionship once again as well. It was a good place, a safe place, and she most frequently went about clad in a loose long-waisted blouse and hobbit-style trousers, unornamented, quite comfortable and quite unconscious of her looks. It did Sam's heart glad to see color return to her pale face, and light to her darkened eyes. And she'd laughed, sometimes, almost the way she had used to, so that if he closed his eyes he could almost forget how much she'd changed.

The grand feasts in the King's court, though – those were a different matter.

Aragorn had come down to their white house as often as he could. His time was mostly not his own – everyone had a claim on him, and he was desperately needed everywhere. But he'd tended to Frodo with his own hands whenever it was possible for him to do so, and he himself found comfort and rest in the sole company of their Fellowship.

He'd granted Frodo a long respite, guarding her privacy and her recovery, letting her linger in peace and safety away from the great changes that were still shaking their world. He's refused to use her as political capital, not wanting to tax her strength. But they could not hide forever; eventually, the King would have to publically acknowledge the Ringbearer, if only to lay to rest the wilder rumors coursing through the still-damaged and war-torn city.

When their time ran out, they'd been out in the garden, Sam tying back roses and Frodo sitting curled up against the warm white wall dozing in the sunlight, when Pippin came down – in his black and silver Guardsmen's dress, no less – to pass on the announcement. Aragorn wanted them present at a court banquet, as guests of highest honor.

When they'd come to Minas Tirith, Frodo had been gifted with an exquisite wardrobe of hobbit-sized gowns in the latest Gondorian fashions, which involved among other things three layers of petticoats and bone stays about the waist. They'd all stared at the court ladies' shoes as they walked through the white stone streets, registering amazement at their elevated heels, and Sam was thankful that the hobbits' unilateral decision to decline footwear had spared Frodo from those Jewelled satin devices. But as the Cormacolindor, the Ringbearer, the king' guest of highest honor, Frodo could scarcely make her entrance dressed in peasant's clothing.

When they returned to their little white house, Sam proceeded upstairs before his mistress to lay out her things for the evening. When Frodo came up, the gown and stays and petticoats and jewels were already spread on her bed, sparkling and strange, and somehow cruel. Standing stock still on the cold stone floor, clad in nothing but her shift, she looked at the fine dress as if it were a serpent, or a starburst – something rich and inexplicable.

Sam bit his lip in quiet worry as the light vanished from her face. "Mistress, what's the matter?" he asked her, taking and holding her still-bandaged hand between his own. "You're trembling." He drew her down to sit beside him on the low bed, not liking the pallor of her face or the shortness of her breath. It would never do for her to faint, or fall.

Her voice was soft and low as she confessed, "I don't know if I can do this, Sam."

He could see the outline of her thin body clearly through the light fabric of her shift – the shadows beneath her ribs, the terrible slenderness of her legs, the now-small curves of her breasts riding high on her chest again, as if she was the little hobbit-girl he'd met when she'd first come to her uncle at Bag End. She looked to be starving still. He'd begun to regain his own lost weight, the good food and ease of life they currently enjoyed putting his own deprived body to rights. It was only right that their angles be replaced by curves. Hobbits were not meant to be thin. But she still looked so breakable.

"What do you mean?" he said. "What can't you do?"

"I can't be her," Frodo said, turning her face away from the laid-out finery. "I haven't been her in such a very long time, Sam, and I can't think how to get back."

Sam drew her close, trying not to notice how quickly the gesture came, or how natural it felt. Things had changed too much between the two of them; he'd have to find a way to mend it all up again, stitch them both back into their right places. "I still don't rightly understand what you mean, mistress. Won't you tell me the trouble?"

She sighed, and for a moment she felt even smaller in his arms. "There isn't any trouble, really, Sam," she said. "It's that everything is strange right now, I suppose. I only meant – I feel as though the Frodo Baggins who went to parties and wore fine gowns was a lass I knew once, long ago. She doesn't feel like me at all. I think," she added, with a queer bitter little laugh, "that I've been rather too changed by this last year, dear Sam. And I don't know what to do about it. Merry and Pippin can be knights of Gondor and Rohan, and you – everyone knows that when we go back home you'll be amazing. The whole of the Shire will see the strength of you, and come to value you as much as I do, and you'll get married and – and oh, Sam, what is there for me?"

Sam looked at her, feeling uncommonly awkward and tongue-tied. It was as if he always saw her in double-vision nowadays: the lovely learned hobbit-lass, and the pale fair set-lipped Ringbearer, bloodied and bird-thin, hung about with horrible burdens of silver and gold. Truth told, he didn't know now which she was. But he still had to soothe her, care for her hurts, find something to say to set her heart at rest, and so he tried, reaching out to her with clumsy and meaningless words.

"It's only fool's fashion, Mistress Frodo. Don't fret so about it. You're still healing, for one thing, and you oughtn't to waste yourself in worriting about trifles. And for all that, it's clear that Strider only means to honor and please you. Don't dwell on the dark things, mistress. Put them aside, and let's get you dressed."

"All right," she acquiesced, and withdrew her hand from his grasp. But as he laced her into the gown, and hung netted jewels over her short-cropped hair, and handed her a little pot of red stain for her lips, he felt uncomfortably as if he were binding a prisoner, or caging a creature caught by snare or trick. He left off the stays completely, not wanting to do anything to impede her breathing or strain her still-weak lungs, but the skirt of her gown hung down behind her in a long train, covering her feet and forcing her to take small and mincing steps. Frodo looked beautiful, and looking at her hurt Sam more than anything he ever could have imagined, though he couldn't say why. Maybe it was that she was right, at least a little: he couldn't properly imagine her as she was now living back in Bag End. And at any rate, Bag End had been sold, months before. She had no proper home left.

Frodo entered the great Hall on Meriadoc's arm, Samwise having been deemed by the seneschal an escort of insufficient rank for her. Sam had tried his best not to let that rankle, but nevertheless it gnawed at his heart like a canker. It no longer felt right for her to be out of his reach, where he couldn't aid or help her should she need him. Frodo looked tiny next to her tall kinsman, delicate and frail and impossibly young, but she glowed like a pearl for all that, and her radiance cast shadows on Merry's face as he stood close beside her. Sam burned for the touch of her hand on his arm. He tried to look away.

Sam had his own place of honor that night, but again and again his thoughts returned to his mistress, and to the searing image of her pale and bare-shouldered, her face painted over with bewilderment and pain. He knew that she had seen through his attempt at comfort, back in her dressingg-room. seen that it was built of nothing but dust and bygone platitudes. Nothing that he'd said held any truth now that everything was changed. They would have to change too; there was nothing for it. And there was so little left of her for that effort. He had carried her up a mountain, but he had no idea how to help her now.


End file.
